Diary Entries

and finally

Im actually quite happy with my result, even though the game is not much by way of a challenge. I actually think this could make a really fun multiplayer game, but that's currently out of my experience level.

I had no firm ideas when the week started -in fact I would say that I 'discovered' the game around Thursday when it occurred to me to tweak things in this direction -I suspect many would say that this is usually how it turns out but I'm learning all this for the first time.

The thing I struggled with the most was the AI: in this sense I completely overreached. There are only two or three possible 'verbs' for a player in WebWars but it was still a crazy undertaking for me trying to squeeze competent behaviour out of the computer. The messiness of my code combined with Python's flexibility really saw things getting out of hand on the last day. In this sense Python gives you enough rope to hang yourself with.

I spent six days on gameplay and AI and managed to get all the artwork done on the last day. In future I would prefer to leave more time for the latter and of course to add sound which is something I never ever seem to get to!

Congrats to all who participated -cant wait to see what others came up with -I have a idea though, I've been keeping close watch

Mid week choices

Due to the fact that my game looks a bit like a spider's web I decided to go with that as my setting. Instead of being up against a humanoid super-hero nemesis you are now up against an arachnid super-hero (or you will be once I draw them)

It was a tough day getting in the hero characters, combat, cooldowns and figuring out what everyone is supposed to do and when. The worst is yet to come tho when I have to put in some kind of enemy AI -ai! Maybe the most time consuming thing was finalizing what I actually want the gameplay to be -a long walk helped a lot in that regard.

You can now move your hero around, attack the enemy and plant nests which spawn minions. I really want to see this thing come to life -hope it works out

Day 3

Its been a hectic last two days at work and Ive only just managed to get the 'board' graph up and running. Nodes that have been claimed by players now spawn minions that start travelling along the edges of the graph to the enemy's base.

My idea has evolved somewhat, mostly due to the fact that my original idea had a few holes in it. Now the objective is to claim as many minion-generating nodes as possible to overwhelm the enemy (yes a bit like DOTA) whilst improving your character for your showdown with your nemesis. Im toying with a few possible ways to make it more unique while still keeping things simple.

I still dont have even basic gameplay going and theres lots more to do besides that. Tomorrow Ill have more time to put into this but I really need to make some serious progress if Im going to finish on time.